Downtown

P: Following the President's order (TIME, Sept. 11) the Treasury last week began to pay U. S. producers the world price for gold. First the Treasury paid $29.62 an ounce--$8.95 more than the statutory price of $20.67 which producers have always received. Then gold prices slumped in London, sterling and the dollar rose in exchange value. Next day the Treasury paid gold producers only $29.12. Quickly gold producers were taught that henceforth the price of their commodity is a great uncertainty. P: Silvermen, jealous for years of gold producers' greater prosperity, quickly demanded that a place be made for them on the Administration bandwagon. With silver last week selling at around 37-c- an ounce in the U. S., the value of the silver in a silver dollar was about 27-c- (19#162; gold value). No profit could silver men get by being given the world price, for they are already selling in a wide-open market. Senator Pittman of silver-shot Nevada proposed that silver producers be permitted to take their product to the U. S. Mint, have it coined and receive not the value of the silver but the coins made from it. Thus he resurrected the old Bryan formula (coinage of silver at 16 to 1) with two minor variations: 1) that only U. S. producers should be allowed to take their silver to the Mint, 2) that they should pay a charge of 10-c- an ounce for cost of minting. By this plan silver producers would get about $1.19 an ounce, over three times the market price, more than silver has sold for at any time during the last 50 years except for a brief period just after the-- War. Chief drawback would be that the U. S. paper industry which is also in sore straits, could logically demand permission to take paper to the Mint and receive it back as paper dollars, less cost of printing. P: Great Western Sugar Co., producer of about half the U. S. beet sugar output, last week resumed common dividends after a three-year lapse, declared a 60-c- quarterly dividend. Well might it do so. In 1931 the company lost $1,000,000. Last year with sugar prices close to bottom, it scaled down the prices paid to farmers for beets, came out with a $2,500,000 profit. Since February sugar prices have risen 3/4-c- (stood last week at 4.7-c- a pound for refined sugar). If an additional 1/2-c-a pound net can be made on the company's annual output of about one billion pounds, the additional profit will be $5,000,000 which would boost profits to $7,500,000, practically the 1928 level. P: Commercial Credit Co. of Baltimore built a big business financing installment sales of automobiles. When the automobile business was hit by Depression, Commercial Credit's yearly financing was cut from $442,000,000 (1929) to $141,000,000 (1932). Automobile sales are once more mounting but the pick-up in industry will have a wider effect on Commercial Credit's business, for last week the company announced its entry into a new field: factoring (financing of textile sales). Commercial Credit purchased a two-thirds interest in $12,000,000 Textile Banking Co., offered stockholders $50 a share for the remaining one-third. Chairman of Textile Banking is Harvey Dow Gibson, president of Manhattan's Manufacturers Trust Co. Its directorate includes Mortimer Norton Buckner, Eugene William Stetson, Grayson M. P. Murphy. How Well Commercial Credit has come through Depression is shown by the fact that it will need no new financing to complete the purchase nor to retire $3,000,000 of its own notes falling due Nov. 1, 1934. P: Edward A. Crawford, commodity speculator whose crash in the July market break caused the Chicago Board of Trade to peg prices (TIME, Aug. 21), has since tried to compromise with his creditors, offering them 25-c- on the dollar in cash, promising them in future to abandon trading in grains, to stick to cotton which he knows most about, and to pay them back out of his future profits. Last week the New York Cotton Exchange suspended him, ordered his seat sold at auction. Previously he had been suspended from the Board of Trade and the New York Commodity Exchange for insolvency, but the suspension which last week struck a blow at his plans for 3 comeback was made not only for failing to meet obligations but for violating by-laws of the Cotton Exchange including one specifying "conduct detrimental to the best interests of the Exchange or the welfare of the U. S."

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